U.S. Arms May Be Essential to Iran : Missile Parts Crucial to Defending Oil Facilities Said to Be Among Shipments

The weapons shipped to Iran by the United States and Israel during secret negotiations for the release of American hostages may be crucial to Iran’s war effort against Iraq, despite Reagan Administration claims that the supplies were insignificant.

Administration officials said Friday that the secret arms shipments included key parts for Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, which Iran could use to defend its oil terminal on Kharg Island. Oil exports are Iran’s sole significant source of foreign earnings to keep the war going.

Equally important, the officials said, Israel appears to have taken advantage of the handful of arms shipments that President Reagan authorized to reopen its own secret arms pipeline to Iran. And, while the U.S. shipments to Iran were restricted to defensive equipment, Israel observed no such rule, delivering spare parts for everything from F-4 jet fighters to tanks, officials said.

“We did allow the Israelis to make shipments to Tehran. They did it with our knowledge,” a U.S. official said. “Either directly or indirectly, we’ve provided TOW (anti-tank missiles), Hawk (anti-aircraft) missiles, radar systems, F-4 parts and a variety of other spare parts.”

‘Modest Deliveries’

President Reagan and his aides, in explaining the secret arms deliveries, have emphasized that the shipments they authorized were small. “These modest deliveries, taken together, could easily fit into a single cargo plane,” Reagan said Thursday in his nationally televised speech.

“The total volume . . . certainly could not have affected the outcome of the war,” said Robert C. McFarlane, the former White House adviser who originated the idea of a new U.S. relationship with Iran.

The issue is critical to the credibility of the Administration’s policy on the war. Reagan said the United States remains neutral between Iran and Iraq, and U.S. diplomats have been instructed to assure Saudi Arabia and other friendly Arab countries that the arms shipments were carefully designed not to tip the balance in the war.

But other Administration officials, speaking on the condition that they not be identified, said the quality of the equipment--and its value to Iran’s defenses--made it militarily significant, whether it clearly changes the course of the war or not.

“They’ve been desperate to get their Hawk batteries working again,” said one official who has closely followed the course of the war. “If they can stop the Iraqis from attacking Kharg, that would be a development of great significance.”

In fact, one official said he believes that the missiles have already halted Iraqi offensives against the island.

Quantity Important

A Pentagon analyst said he doubted that the outcome of the war could be changed without larger shipments than have been reported. “There isn’t a lot of stuff that’s going to change that war, until you get into quantities,” he said. “You need large quantities to be offensive.”

But he agreed that Iran’s growing ability to defend against attacks by the increasingly aggressive Iraqi air force is a key factor in the war. “The Iranians aren’t using their airplanes too much,” he noted. “They’re there, in position to go after Iraqi aircraft, and they won’t do it. They’re really husbanding their resources.”

“There is no way to dismiss the importance of those arms deliveries,” said Gary Sick, a National Security Council adviser on Iran during the Jimmy Carter Administration. “Iran needs almost everything in terms of equipment. If you can’t get quantity, quality is tremendously important because there are certain things that just aren’t available on the black market. Those parts are vital. The fact that there wasn’t a huge volume of it is less important than the fact that these were parts they probably couldn’t get anywhere else.”

Administration officials disagreed over whether the impact of the equipment sent by the United States and Israel had already been felt on the battlefield.

One official said the shipments have allowed Iran to put more Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, TOW anti-tank missiles and F-4 fighter planes into action. But two other officials said the evidence was inconclusive.

Kharg Island Defense

“The reason the Iraqis have stopped bombing Kharg Island lately is that the Hawk batteries are operational again--and that is more than a negligible contribution to the Iranian war effort,” the first official said.

Two other officials confirmed that Iraq’s raids on the island have ceased but said they had seen no clear evidence that Hawk missiles are operational around Kharg Island, a huge oil terminal in the northern Persian Gulf.

Iraq’s air force virtually destroyed the two largest jetties on Kharg in September, forcing Iran to shut the terminal entirely for several weeks. But the Iraqi attacks on the island ceased in early October, even though U.S. intelligence reports say Kharg has reopened and Iran’s oil exports have climbed back up to an average of 1.1 million barrels per day.

“It’s flowing now, but it’s on and off,” the Pentagon official said. “That’s a significant impact.”

U.S.-supplied TOW missiles, highly sophisticated anti-tank weapons, “have made a critical difference in turning back Iraqi tank assaults,” the first official said.

F-4s Back in Air

As for the F-4s, he said, “three months ago you could check and see that their F-4s weren’t up in the air. A month ago, you could check again and they were.” A second official agreed that Iran’s F-4 fleet “seems to have stopped degrading.”

Administration officials have said that Reagan did not authorize the shipment of any F-4 parts because the United States considers the fighter an offensive weapon that could be used for raids against Iraq.

But Israeli sources said the Jerusalem government has supplied F-4 parts to Iran, as well as tires for the Iranian fighter planes.

When asked whether the Israeli shipments had been approved by the United States, Reagan’s national security adviser, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, said Friday: “I don’t want to get into any details on the record of U.S. government arrangements with Israel.”

But he also said that the Administration is still pressing other countries--presumably including Israel--not to ship arms to Iran.

Plane Load Can Be 130 Tons

While President Reagan said the United States has sent only the equivalent of a single cargo plane-load of equipment to Iran, Poindexter said the craft he was referring to was the Air Force’s giant C-5 transport, which can carry more than 260,000 pounds of cargo.

But Israeli sources and a spate of other, unconfirmed reports suggest that Israel has sent more.

Sources in Jerusalem said tank parts, Sidewinder and Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank weapons and even some artillery pieces have been shipped to Iran from Israel. They said Israel sent at least three separate shipments of arms to Iran in 1985.

The Danish Seamen’s Union says it has recorded seven shiploads of cargo which its members claim contained military equipment and were sent from Israel’s port of Eilat to Iran.

Israel’s government has insisted that it has shipped no weapons to Iran without U.S. authorization.

Expects Iraq to Understand

As for Iraq, Poindexter said he was sure that the Baghdad government would “understand” the U.S. decision to send limited shipments of arms to Iran.

But an Iraqi source said Friday that the regime of Saddam Hussein “cannot understand this at all. Iraqis cannot understand somebody saying one thing and then doing the opposite.”

He said some of Iraq’s Arab neighbors had asked the United States for permission to lend U.S.-made military equipment to Iraq, and the United States refused.

Iraq has reportedly received some help from the United States in the form of satellite intelligence about Iranian troop movements. But the Iraqi source said: “We have received nothing as useful as what Iran seems to have received.”

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang in Washington and Dan Fisher in Jerusalem contributed to this story.